Thursday, December 9, 2010

Headlines - Thursday December 9

Facing a booing crowd in Europe, a PayPal executive tried to explain why his company blocked donations to Wikileaks. He cited a letter from the State Department calling the secrets-sharing site illegal. Sadly for him, no such letter exists. More »

And this:

Hackers take down Visa.com

Moments after Wikileaks supporters gave an attack order, credit card network Visa just saw its website taken offline. Mastercard.com, meanwhile, also remains down. More »

Palin is getting cyber-attacked, too, after shooting her mouth off about Julian Assange and talking out her ass "London-based hackers reportedly working in support of the website WikiLeaks as part of "Operation Payback" have turned their keyboards on Sarah Palin, launching a cyber-attack targeted at her fundraising arm SarahPAC, as well as the former Alaska Governor's personal credit card information. ... "No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange's antics," Palin emailed ABC News, which originally reported the hacking attempt. "This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts."" (Remember the final words of the final scene of the 1992 movie Sneakers? We would love to hear them in real life as pertains to this...)

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Wisco: WikiLeaks and kiddie porn Barbie - if something is possible, you should be afraid of it.

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Today on Fox, Michele Bachmann claimed that a middle class payroll tax cut would hurt the deficit, but tax cuts for the wealthy will not.

The snotty quote was posted by Sarah Palin on (like all the great frontier women who've come before her) her Facebook page to respond to the criticism she knew and hoped would be coming after she hunted, killed and carved up a Caribou during a segment of her truly awful reality show, Sarah Palin's Alaska, broadcast on The-Now-Hilariously-Titled Learning Channel.

It's been 10 years since the Supreme Court usurped the power of the People and instead appointed George W. Bush as president. At that time America had a surplus. We are on tract to completely pay off the national debt in 10 years, which would be today.

Instead we got 9/11, two wars, a collapsing economy, and about 14 trillion dollars in national debt. America invades other countries without provocation. Wall Street steals trillions and we reward them with trillions more. We run torture prisons in Iraq and the real culprits don't go to jail. We steal from the poor to give to the rich. We have become a broken nation.

On that day 10 years ago the integrity of our nation was damaged in a way that America might never recover. History might record this single act as the beginning of the end of the America we knew and the beginning of a dark chapter in our nations history. And although there is no mechanism in law to protect the People from the Supreme Court we must always remember that what they did 10 years ago was fundamentally an act of treason to the Constitution and we as a nation are suffering the consequences of allowing this national disgrace.

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The teabaggers are divine

According to their sacred literature, anyway. Would you believe this collection of angry ignorant kooks whining about their taxes in local American politics is actually written up in the Bible? Yeah, this is the fourth Tea Party movement: the first was after the death of Solomon, the second was led by Jesus Christ himself, the third was the Boston event, and the fourth was begun by a ranting overprivileged ass on the Chicago stock exchange, which makes Rick Santelli some kind of prophet, apparently.

Man, these guys are lunatics. American politics is more than a little embarrassing for Americans.

So do they also agree that anyone in the US government who spied on Americans should be murdered? How about those who leaked the Valerie Plame story? Any other enemies of the state? Kill them too, Robespierre? Or is that Stalin? What has happened to our country that it's so easy to talk about murdering someone on national TV because you don't like what the details have to say? WikiLeaks has not violated any specific law.

The poll shows clearly that these contributors are deeply opposed (74%) to a deal with Republicans to extend the Bush-era tax breaks for those making over $250,000 a year. The depth of opposition to a deal is severe with former Obama contributors saying that they are less likely (57%) to support Democrats who support this deal in 2012.

A majority of the former Obama contributors surveyed also say that the President's deal also makes them less likely (51%) to contribute to his reelection campaign in 2012.

"Crisis" is putting it mildly. "Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says Middle East peace talks are in crisis following Israel's refusal to stop building in settlements. His comments come hours after the US said that it had failed to get Israel to renew its settlement curbs. Mr Abbas suspended talks in September after a 10-month halt on Israeli building in the occupied West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, expired. The US has vowed to find other ways to bring the two sides together."

It is a very slow news day today, in honor of John Lennon, a man who wrote music and died one time. It also seems slow for something called the Congressional Prayer Caucus, which seeks to make Americans pray more by sticking prayer earmarks into the law books or something. What is the controversy? Obama doesn't say "God" enough for them, of course. He recently said "E pluribus unum" is the national motto, but it is not, because Dwight Eisenhower made "In God We Trust" the motto thing, trusting that nobody would ever care about such trivial matters, much less make it their entire business of being in government. Of course, "E pluribus unum" is considered a national motto, and Obama still says God a lot, but they do not care, because they need something to pretend to get irate about today. READ MORE »